Firenze Italy (Florence) Part I

Wednesday dawned a brilliantly, sunny and gorgeous day.  We were pretty excited about that since we wanted good weather for Florence.  It was a lot colder than it looks from the pictures however.  We drove the one hour drive in the awesome rental van and made it to the great parking lot we had heard about from some friends.  It was amazing to walk to the edge of the lot and be greeted by the above and below pictures.  We hadn’t even started our day yet and I was already in LOVE with FLORENCE!

We started our walk into the Duomo via the Famous Ponte Vecchio bridge. 

On our walk down to the bridge we stopped for pictures.  I got one of this Mamma Mia Grandma below:  just what I would picture an Italian Grandma looking like! 

The Ponte Vecchio Bridge is lined with gold and silver jewelry shops on both sides. 

We wound our way through the city with Jared “The Activities Director” at the lead and got right to the Duomo Cathedral.  The outside is very colorful and busy, but well balanced and fun to look at. 

 

We were pretty eager to climb it and get another view of the skyline of Florence.  It was a huge climb.  Probably the highest thing with the most steps we have climbed yet in Europe.  It was neat toward the end because the stairs curve and follow the shape of the dome inside of it. 

  

Inside the cathedral this is what the dome is painted and looks like.  Its quite impressive: 

 

Oh how I love that blue sky!  Especially since it had been gloomy and raining on and off since we got to Italy. 

There was a strike going on while we were there with the worker’s unions or something like that, which didn’t bother us much until they suddenly closed the “Accademia” Museum on us which houses the DAVID.  More on that later in the day…..

 

Next we headed over to the Uffizi Gallery which has the greatest collection of Italian paintings anywhere according to Rick Steves’ handy Italy book.  It is the building right next to these statues:  The one is the replica of the David which is pretty famous for being the outside version, the “I don’t want to pay the exorbitant price” version.  I’m sure lots of people take this route, but the real David is worth the price!  The Uffizi Gallery was quite nice for the Italian art scene (which doesn’t happen to be my favorite genre of paintings).  We went as quickly as possible so we could see more of Florence. 

     

Our tickets for the David weren’t for a little bit still, so we headed to the open market that Florence is Famous for.  The best deals are the scarves and ties which they sell a lot of, but they also have tons of leather purses, jackets, wallets, boots, glove, and belts.  We bought lots of ties for Christmas presents as well as for Jared and Carter.  Hanna got a green necklace with white/ green murano charm, Jake and Josh got gloves with out tips on the fingers, (to which Cole then later begged for a pair), Jared got a new belt, Carter got a Batman t-shirt, belt and ties.  I got a green purse and some black boots.  We also purchased some scarves.  Sooo much fun!  I could spend hours there.  Oh yeah I guess I did! 

 

On our walk over to the David, we came across these street painters.  They were pretty amazing.  We all especially liked this one of Santa sleeping and dreaming about flying over Florence. 

When we got over to the Accademia where Michelangelo’s DAVID resides, we got our tickets out and they said it was closed due to the workers union strike.  We explained that we had purchased these tickets weeks before via the internet and what could we please do?  We asked if it would be open later, or if we could just be shown it since this was our only planned day to Florence during our trip.  They were very adimant that no we were not going to see the DAVID that day.  We talked to the tickets office and they seem to think that if we came back the next day, that they would redeem the tickets.  So after some discussion it was determined that we would come back to Florence the next morning, modifying our plans, which meant we would only have half a day in Siena instead of a whole day.  It also was a we hope the people tomorrow will honor your tickets kind of answer from the ticket counter…..We were shocked with their matter of fact, sorry you’re out of luck and not we won’t refund you attitudes!  Thankfully it all worked out in the end to come back the next day, but WOW!  So before heading back to the car, we went to eat at Trattoria 4 Leoni.  It is a restaurant that Chris and Lisa have talked about for over a year.  Their homemade pasta stuffed with Italian cheeses and pear is to die for!  Our only complaint was we wanted seconds.  We were exhausted by the time we got back to our villa.  The kids headed to bed and the grown ups stayed up and played lots of Hand in Foot!